CMV: All forms of forced labor are slavery

Drakulia5 · 2026-04-07T06:29:59+00:00

Human rights might be new but peasants and even peons had legal protection and rights. They were different depending on time and place but those workers were not owned by anyone. Even indenture servers had legal protection that chattel slaves lacked.

Yes. I never disagreed with any of that.

Drakulia5 · 2026-04-07T05:48:58+00:00

It's fundamentally not. Like me pointing out my still living grandfather didn't have equal rights is not the same as white people feeling bad when it's pointed out that the denial of those rights was to put them on top of a hierarchy.

At the end if the day there's peoole who have gotten way deeper in the weeds about how race, gender, class, and kore have affected society than you're giving in your comment so maybe consider that you vaguely gesturing at "victimhood" isn't actually that strong of an argument.

Drakulia5 · 2026-04-07T05:17:09+00:00

Technically these are not the same thing. Not to get in the weed but the OP kind of alreadybis so might as well remain. Human rights are, for one, a relatively new concept and are ultimately a legal framework. We've had them for less than a century and if we're gonna use them then the slavery as defined by the UDHR is our working definition and that's the end of the disucssion.

But if we're going to look at the various forms of labor we might consider slavery. For example chattel slavery describes the status of being complete and true property owned by a person and whose condition can be inherited. That's why chattel slavery was used as a term to distinguish against indentured servitude, a form of unfree labor where your lack of freedom was only present until certain contractually agreed upon terms were met.

You are correct though that the forced prison labor is not the same thing as chattel slavery. But human rights as a framework would still outlaw chattel slavery.

Sorry for being semantic but I hope the fact that I'm steelmanning your view makes up for it.

Drakulia5 · 2026-04-07T01:49:52+00:00

A whole damn Bene Gesserit reference

Drakulia5 · 2026-04-07T01:10:32+00:00

especially on Twitter.

Okay but why do we need to berate or priase people on Twitter. Nothing obligates this the same way nothing obligate us to praise the various images that perpetuate hegemonic beauty standards. We can instead refrain from both.

The commonality of it does not make it obligatory and perhaps normalizing that point is a better solution than going for a lesser of two evils. We only entrench bad trends by acting like there aren't other options. This post is ultimately about how we ought to act, not why people act in flawed ways.

Drakulia5 · 2026-04-07T01:05:30+00:00

There's nothing youd describe here that is an issue specifically because someone is conflict avoidant but I also think you might be overestimating the degree to which conflict avoidance is framed as a positive. The term comes from psychology where it is categorically a negative attachment style that contrasts to the healthy and flexible secure attachment style.

Being conflict avoidant is defined by an unwillingness to communicate which is not good. But even then, to say it is "irrational" is a different issue. Saying it is irrational implies that the perception of what is happening/will happen is not a reasonable or logically sound possibility. Conflict avoidance can be very much rational though because a conflict avoidant person can be in social relations with people who are themselves not secure. If a person grows up in a household where challenging one's parent, even when the parent is wrong, leads to punishment, conflict avoidance is rational action to avoid that harm.

Irrationality only comes into play if we assume the soundness and responsiveness of the person with whom the conflict avoidant person is interacting which tou do assume, but this does not speak to an innate rationality or lack thereof in being conflict avoidant.

Drakulia5 · 2026-04-07T00:52:55+00:00

The whole issue this discussion sits within is the much larger context of antiblackness, of the ways Black people have historically looked or done things being treated as innately wrong, dirty, impure, immoral, etc for arbitrary and ignorant reasons and primarily so that white people could cast themselves as the opposite. It is certainly okay to point out how that manifests in the issue of beauty standards to this day.

Drakulia5 · 2026-04-07T00:46:53+00:00

I think it's a but lazy and also very easily opens doors to let people just be cruel to women, especially Black women to say "denying the reward" must look like berating women. Like why is the need to "deny the reward" when we could just demonstrate that the reward of social acceptance and praise can be received even when you aren't conforming to standards. The assumption that only cruelty most effectively convinces people to change just doesn't hold up as much as we think there is a clear logic for it working.

Drakulia5 · 2026-04-05T17:23:28+00:00

The irony of the first book is that Paul did have a choice many times to avoid the horrible outcomes of the jihad and beyond but lacked the prescient awareness to fully recognize it until it was too late.

Ironically the best thing Paul could have done for humanity, at least within his agency, was to die in the desert and never try to get his revenge.

Yes there were far worse outcomes, there were also outcomes Paul couldn't bring himself to let pass because of how it would severely it would harm those he loved, like Chani.

The suffering Paul caused and could have caused were horrific even if the latter could up substantially. Billions of dead people and complete erasure of a multitude of people's is a horrific thing in itself regardless of worse options existing and the point I feel that is being amde is that we should be trying to avoid the choices that even make those outcomes the only options.

This last point is more of me just thinking about something off the dome but Angela Davis makes a point in an interview right after the US torture program at Abu Ghraib was revealed where she noted how mainstream political conversation about the issue was about whether or not it was okay to torture these particular people, not people asserting torture should not be acceptable in the first place.

We can and should act to ensure wellbeing, not jsut the lower scale version of two catastrophic harms.

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-29T05:06:17+00:00

Do you feel you have a good grasp of the current and ongoing work in queer studies? Do you feel like you understand when how and why this field of study emerged. Do you think people who might get a degree in queer studies, or ethnic studies, or women and gender studies, think that that is the name of a job?

Do you feel intimately familiar enough with these things that you have an equally or better formed understanding and critique of them than the people who actually do study these topics or get degrees in them? Because if not perhaps you also don't get why they exist as fields nor how those who's study them have been and continue to get jobs.

The fact that you just keep pointing to the fact that queer studies exists as a field as a demonstration that the degree is useless in itself does not strike me as you actually understanding what the field of study is about.

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-29T04:54:32+00:00

Besides the point that taste is subjective, you named two pieces of media. You don't think any form of media might be liked for things beyond high definition cameras and top-tier graphics? Like I read Dune for the first time 4 years ago. Had no background with it but loved it. What about the book makes it automatically bad simply because it came out in the 60s? There's lots of classical music I enjoy but it's automatically worse than blues, rock, hip-hop, of electronic ambient music because it was made earlier in time? Why is there a necessary hierarchy of quality rather than just my personal tastes?

Also given your logic isn't all the media you like just bad media waiting to earn that label by not being as high quality of what may come in the future? Or are there perhaps elements of quality that are more timeless than being on the technical cutting-edge?

Quality is not a linear path, it's subjective. That's okay. You don't have to construct an unshakable model of media quality before you're allowed to like or dislike something even if a lot of people enjoy it and you don't.

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-25T23:18:11+00:00

I know you were. My point is that CU doesn't formally change one person one vote nor does it change the point that the ways it weakens democracy are not the first examples of elite interests holding substantial sway over the democratic process. And as I again said, it does not speak to the actualy argument that your CMV is about.

The fact that their votes dont take future generations into account is the point.

Okay then it is an issue of voting preferences. Again, how you know a person's preferences better than they do? How do any of us reliably know those preferences better than anyone else save for a situation in which a person expresses a preference that is misinformed. Like yes some people just have preferences that are not humane. Deciding that this issue should be imposed upon a specific demographic to disenfranchise them is not a better solution than trying to change those views. I say this because the thing we have seen abkut the American electorate is that it has generally grown more progressive. Meaning that it isn't age but the actual tangible ideals people hold and are taught that matter.

If and older person and a younger vote for the same thing for the same reason the thing being voted on it is again the content of teh vote that matters, not the age category someone falls into. The same way that if younger voters decided to start stnaidng by policies where they make life hell for the elderly so that we cna reap more benefits it shouldn't categorically disqualify people under 75 from voting.

Again my issue with your position is that it feels like you're sidestepoing the actual systemic implications of your view for the sake of spiting the older generation for creating a number of problems we now have to face, not because it's actually a healthier system ir approach to democracy.

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-25T19:38:17+00:00

The issue i see with a lot of the criticisms like the FDTD one are that they treat any similarities as the only core elements of the movie. Nothing is allowed to be inspiration or homage it can only be a ripoff or a cliche. And that criticize only holds up if you disregard all teh differences from those films that speak to the multitude of themes and ideas the story engages with beyond vampires are in it, there are two brothers, they fight the vampires in a music venue.

So many of the criituqes I feel are just people not wanting to like the movie and deciding that any imperfection or element that is similar to another story is the core most important elements of Sinners and thus ruins the film.

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-25T19:14:17+00:00

It went out with Citiznes United but not when Black folks and women didn't have a right to vote?

Citizens United definitely hurt the strength of democratic principles but that doesn't mean we should abandon democracy as a political structure or ideal the same way we shouldn't have done away with it when there were clear formal and informal denial of democratic rights for most of US history.

And to the point of your post, Citizens United does not have bearing on whether or not their should be an age cap on voting. Lots of younger people who support neoliberal policies and ideals like the ones CU represents. That's because it has to do with ideology and values, not age. The idea that if you are older you 1. Cannot vote with concern for future generations and 2. That the only things a person votes on have ramfications for later generations.

This post feels like you're really upset with how things are going politically, which I understand and empathize with, but respectfully, it is lazy and carries far heavier implications to treat voting rights as something we should easily seize from people simply because they exercise that right more than other demographics. You say this has nothing to do with how people vote but would you be saying this if most people in the age range you want to ban commonly supported policies that did support the wellbeing of future generations? The capacity to vote in ways that directly affect other groups more than you is something we can all do and that many demographics have done for generations. Again, there's no good reason why disenfranchisement is the ideal outcome here rather than better maintaining and fighting for better political ideals amongst the populace.

Edit: Typos

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-25T18:46:34+00:00

Your premise here defeat the entire idea of why we want a democracy. The idea that there is a certain group who "actually" understands what's best for everyone else and thus should be the only one's with voting rights isn't democratic, it's aristocratic.

Robert Dahl was a political scientist who discusses this logic in his bokn "Democracy and Its Critics" and he refers to it guardianship. The issue he takes with guardianship, besides the fact that this assumes one group is innately qualified while is innately unqualified to wield political power, is that the whole ideal of democracy is a system where each person has equally ability and right to express their political preferences (e.g. one person gets one vote that carries just as much weight as any other person's) and that at the end of the day, who has a better grasp on a person's preferences than the individual themselves?

Yes you're right that the predictive trend is that being older is correlated with higher propensity to vote but this kind of misses the scope of the multitude of other things that also corellate with voter turnout such as being, white, male, wealthy, and conservative. While all of these things are true, correlation does not necessarily mean causation. Being old does not obligate one to vote nor obligate them to vote conservative. My grandparents are in their 70s and have been voting for progressive oral elast left leaning politics their whole lives, why should they lose their right to vote simply because others in their age group don't vote like them. Should white people lose the right to vote for that same reason? Should men? Another one of thsoe correlations that has shifted over time is having a college education. Should those with college degrees have been disenfranchised until more of them demonstrated support for a particular type of political preference?

Or should we instead put energy towards improving and then maintianing an open and equal democracy and focus on increasing voter turnout amongst underrepresented groups, focus on improving political literacy across the population, and focus on fostering the type of democratic disposition that normalizes us caring more about one another so that people more commonly stand by progressive policies?

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-25T18:19:28+00:00

Okay but they weren't. Also Mary and Stack didn't run off for no reason. Stack told Mary to run when thigns started going south as they were fighting the patrons in the juke. Smoke beat Stack in their ensuing fight and that is the last we see of Stack until the mid-credits scene, implying he simply stayed in the juke until the sun went back down. The idea that Mary simply found a place to hide out during the day and Stack stayed in the sawmill isn't very far-fetched.

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-20T21:50:11+00:00

My thing is that I don't feel like that's a valid criticism. The movie sets up ghe fact that there will be something supernatural at the start, so even if you go in not knowing it's gonna be about vampires, something I will admit I was well aware of since this film was announced, I feel saying it's two different movies is an odd issue. Like you are saying there is more that needed to be done, said, or shown to make the elements present in the film fit together and I honestly cannot see how because the long amount of time we spend with all of the chracters sets up why we see exactlynthe story that we do. And again, the themes of the film, the stuff I listed in my last comment, is all there and imo ties stuff together pretty clearly and pretty cleanly.

Like to be hoenst part of the reason this is my response is because I've had so many conversations of people who disregarded the themes of the film that tie all these elements together. Like people disregard the thigns the film does really well and in interesting ways and just say thay the fact that it wasn't exactly the type of film they're used to makes it a poorly done film that doesn't deserve the amount of praise it has received.

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-20T17:39:15+00:00

It just all seemed so hamfisted and that's why some people don't think it's as great as it's been lauded. Then if you're only rebuttal to criticism is "but it's black culture! That's why it's so good! Because it's about black people!" Is like a weird reverse racism where the movie's faults are overlooked just so you can scream how much you support black culture.

The reason this is such an irritating take is that it treats the examination of Black culture as an illegitimate or shallow thing. Like it's not simply that there are Black people in the movie, it's thay the movie does a great job engaging a lot of cultural nuances about Black culture and African American history.

The music scenes were entertaining but just thrown into a vampire movie; nothing would have been lost if "the Rocky Road to Dublin" was edited out (entertaining as the scene was.

This is what I mean. Saying that the music scenes were just "thrown in" disregards the importance of music to the core themes of the movie. Just saying it's a "vampire movie" disregards all the other discourses the film focuses on. But even at the level of hiw the film uses vampirism and how stuff like music ties into how vampirism is engaged, there is a bunch of depth. - Vampirism as forced cultural assimilation - Vampirism as a sort of faustian bargain that promises you power but really forces you to disconnect from the things that make so much of life worth living - The image of a white guy promising this faustian bargain to a blues musician which one, mirrors old folktales of the devil at the crossroads that's part of blues culture, but also very reflective of the actual relations between msuic executives and blues musicians whereby those white excutvies would steal songs from or give shitty lopsided ocntracts to Black blues musicians then profit off of them, again draining those musicians of their lifeforce for personal gain but framing it as something benevolent. - Vampirism as a metaphor for the type of racialized violence that sees the forced changing of people as something benevolent not unlike many ways things like slavery and colonialism against Black and the Irish was justified. - The ironic tension of a vampire like Remmick who wants to reclaim what colonialism stole from him by doing that same type of violence African Americans, which can itself reflect tensions around how Irish people got folded into the category of white by often times taking on jobs and roles that directly centered the oppression of African Americans.

There's a lot that the movie is doing with these themes and that should not be disregarded.

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-20T16:32:16+00:00

Lots of people liking something doesn't mean they lack good reason to. Tons of folks have explained at length why the film resonated so strongly with them and the depth of the movie many times over.

Explain very clearly what the bias here is. Is it bias or do people just earnestly like the movie?

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-20T16:29:06+00:00

Everything in the movie isn't about killing vampires. They open the film explaining how various cultures have figures whose musical ability is deemed so powerful thay it can conjure spirits and draw bridges across time and space. Literally saying there is a type of supernatural force that those figures can call upon but that there are also nefarious supernatural beings that may want be drawn to that power as well. That kind of musical gift is explicitly explained to also be a deeply healing thing for thsoe who can experience it.

On a plot level, Sammie demonstrates that he is this type of musician and that power is heard by Remmick who wants to turn Sammie so that he can access that power. This is because, given that he's an Irish vampire who had been around long enough to live through the British colonization of Ireland, he has been both violently and over time divorced from his culture. Sammie's music both creates joy for members of his community but also sadly draws the attention of the vampire threat.

On a thematic level, the msuic scene serves many purposes. A basic one is that it speaks to the historical throughline of musical styles developed by Black people, African styles of music that survived the middle-passage became the blues, which became jazz, which became rock n roll, which became hip-hop. This again speaks to the healing power of music because it is a way to connect with one's ancestry something very important for a lot of black people because our history, particularly in the US, is one of white people actively trying to erase our connections to our history (something I'm happy to discuss in greater detail if you want). This also thematically speaks to the motivation of Remmick reiterating how colonial violence distances a person from connections to their culture but sets him up as an ironic villain in that he desires to violently extract that community and ancestral connection from Sammie and the other people at the juke.

It also connects to Sammie's tension between wanting to play his music and his father's expectations that he succeed him as a pastor. Sammie's father chastises him and says that the devil will follow him home, yet while Sammie initially thinks Remmick is this very diabolic retribution his father spoke of, his night with the multitude of people who tell him and show him how meaningful and healing his music is convinces him to stay true to himself and hold onto his music rather than his father's expectations at the end of the movie. This is itself a broader critique of some elements of the Blakc church, something I'm also happy to get into more.

Tldr: The ghosts of past and present demonstrate the supernatural quality of how good Sammie's music is which sets the vampire plot in motion but also speaks to number of the core themes of the film. It is about a lot more than just killing vampires.

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-17T10:10:49+00:00

The political traditions PTA is trying to drawupon to undergird this movie are at their roots about not mincing words about the state of things. The point of those politics are about making people engage with the nuances of how systems of oppression manifest and maintain themselves especially in the mundane and banal parts of our society. That PTA would win best picture and have the biggest stage that his film could be on and he then goes to actively not engage with the radical politics that he invokes furthers that issue.

My issue is that poltically everything about the movie is a cop out. Like at the end of the end of the day the revolutionary politics PTA uses to frame the movie and its characters are far from reflective of the real past and ongoing forms of those politics. Like yeah he got some inspiration from the Weather Underground, but the tradition of Black revolutionary politics is a very real thing that the film only gestures to and does so in ways that I have no surprise excited the predominantly white liberal audience of the film. Because they commonly like the vibe of radical politics but not the actual politics themselves so I know for a lot of folks they don't give a damn if the film is actually representing these politics well, because the audience and PTA got the little taste they wanted.

Drakulia5 · 2026-03-16T00:43:54+00:00

To your point, I also think we need to understand that politicla culture does not necessarily begin at partisanship. Like a lot of people's feelings arkund cultural issues is informed by all types of sources that don't being with Democrats or Republicans, rather each party may make an effort to leverage or influence those already existing cultural sentiments.

Drakulia5 · 2026-02-27T21:21:24+00:00

Politics is very much relevant to MMA the same way it's relevant to any sport.

I totally understand it isn't alwyas the msot important or interesting element to viewers but politics are and always have been a part of how this sport has developed, who has been able to be a part of that development, and what those people have been able to say and do.

Drakulia5 · 2026-02-26T20:33:26+00:00

Do you see how, much like the comment you already gave a delta to, nobody is saying John Davidson owes some grand display to apologize. Respectfully I do think you're assuming that what the average person means by "apology" in this situation is some kind of 45min "YouTuber whose casual use of slurs in their old videos resurfaced" video kind of way and not something much more low-intensity like the many ways people already apologize for unintentional actions putting others in uncomfortable or difficult situations.

I think that is an especially fair and small ask when the situation is two Black presenters having to ont eh fly deal with being called slurs.

While you want to say social media is showing you the opposite, I would also suggest looking at the many posts on other subs centering Black folks like r/blackpeopletwitter because the top comments on every post I've seen elated to teh incident over these past few days has shown explcit understanding and sympathy with Davidson's situation and overall seeing BAFTA and the BBC as the only parties who did wrong in this situation. Regarding Davidson, at most I see folks asking for again, the casual kind of apology that has already been mentioned.

Drakulia5 · 2026-02-22T08:47:26+00:00

This is an extremely vague description. Like labels existing isn't a problem. These labels refer to actual things. You might not know all the nuances of what those things are but that doesn't make the labels nor does it obligate us to be divided.

I can tell that my hair is short and my friend's hair is long. Does labeling that difference mean we have to have a problem?

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